And Now is Something Completely Different for This Blog — British and Funny!

Yes, completely different! I don’t usually invite people to write for my blog; and I haven’t made an exception this time either. Hiring people to write for you sucks. Bastards want money. I should know as I’m one of those bastards, too. So on my own blog I won’t have any of this. Travel humor, however, is a precious commodity. Every now and then, you see something so good that you know you don’t have a choice.

You have to steal it.

No, actually don’t do this. Always try and keep a steady diet wherever you are. You can make use of hostel kitchens, which might not sound fun when there are tons of great restaurants outside, but hostel kitchens are great places to meet people, like hot Scandinavian blonds or hunky Australian surfer dudes. You can get talking to them and they might say they want to share your meat, as it were. Or eat street food with the locals — unless you’re in India, in which case street food is likely to give you dysentery. That’s not a joke. Or go online and find recommendations for cheap eats that won’t keep you in the bathroom for the next 48 hours.

Make a wrong move and this will be your home for next few days. Cosy

Liked that? Me too. Especially the picture. It gave me these… vibes.

Now that you know you have to steal something, weigh pros and cons.

The pros are obvious.

You don’t have to work and sweat. Instead, you can watch TV, read a book (just kidding) or simply jerk off should all other things still fail to amuse you, and…

You don’t have to pay all kinds of parasites to write stuff for you.

However, there is a couple of cons too.

People rarely appreciate when you steal from them. They might send you a lawyer or break your face. Which is better? Depends.

You might be called out, ridiculed and/or ostracized by the community.

Given the risks, what do you do when you have the word Lazy in the title of your blog? You find someone who is really good and who doesn’t mind giving his stuff away.

Can’t be done, you say? He-he, little do you know…

Meet Chirpy Wilberforce (yes, I also think it sounds made up 🙂 ) who runs the blog called Comedy Travel Writing.

Chirpy is an Englishman in New York. He loves American holidays, especially the 4th of July. This is what he has to say about it.

As a British person, I’m not supposed to celebrate 4th of July. It celebrates one of our greatest embarrassments: one of our best colonies got away. Me celebrating America’s freedom is like a rich white person celebrating the end of slavery. It’s illogical. But then I realised it doesn’t matter. If America wants to have a big party as an expression of the fact they don’t have free healthcare or kettles, so be it. Plus, I now have a US bank account and social security number so I’ve basically committed treason at this point anyway.

I loved his writing when I stumbled upon his blog some time ago. Yesterday, however, I stumbled upon his T&C. And loved both of them: T and C.

Anything on this site is yours to steal. Seriously, I mean it. Like that cool photo of Istanbul or that shot of Niagara Falls? Steal ‘em. Whore the hell out of them and stick them on your blog or website and milk them for all they’re worth. Get some likes, get some karma, get some readers, get some other form of Internet popularity points from them.

Alright, all jokes aside, go there and laugh your heart out. No points, no miles, no MS, no Walmart. No pumping or pimping. Just a lot of quirky, irreverent fun and seriously good writing! He doesn’t post often, unfortunately, but when he does…

It started before I even left home. I was sent a confirmation letter that had some rules about what to do and not to do. Don’t touch anything, it said. Be respectful, it said. No laughter, it said. Wait a minute, no laughter? Frankly I think that’s a bit unfair. I mean, the Holocaust was efficient and ruthless genocide of millions of people by an evil regime; no laughing matter. The 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and irreversibly changed the cultural and political landscape of the western world; no laughing matter. Netflix’s $1 price rise; no laughing matter.

But Chernobyl was plain old incompetence. Nobody is evil, nobody is the bad guy, it was just some dumb, tragicomic accident. If it was a cartoon, there would’ve been an equipment panel with a big red button that says “DO NOT PRESS THIS BUTTON”, then somebody slips on a banana peel and falls onto it. Cue laugh track.

It’s hard to explain what the sensation of floating is like. It’s relaxing, definitely, because you’re not expending any energy to keep yourself like that. It’s like lying down on the comfiest couch in the world, one that changes shape to suit you. But despite what that picture might suggest, it’s not so comfy as to give you a boner (that’s just air bubbles, I swear).

There’s a big hole in America. I’m not talking about the hole in the economy out of which all the money is going or about the hole in Oprah’s face into which food is shoved*. I am, in fact, talking about the gigantic hole across the south-west of America, the Grand Canyon. It’s pretty big. Almost as big as the hole my brother and I dug on a beach on Costa Brava back in 1997.

OK. So at this point, you’ve probably figured out I’m not really stealing from Chirpy, and all that was just a ruse to heighten your interest. But the most paranoid among you might still be wondering if I was asked to write this glowing review.

Hell no–period!

Sorry: exclamation mark.

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Hi. My name is Andy Shuman. I'm an avid traveler, a travel and credit writer, and I'm the author of the bestselling Lazy Travelers Handbook series. My message is simple. Every American with good credit can travel for free. Not just cheap, but free! READ MORE